


beau brenatto

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: me sobbing about critical role [21]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy Ending, Gen, beau is adopted by the brenattos au, the angst is only a brief moments dealing with beau's parents dont worry, the graphic depictions of violence is for beau having flashbacks to being abused by her dad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 14:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17788820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: Veth finds a bruised and dirty teenager in the forest, and invites her to dinner.Beau finds a family.





	beau brenatto

**Author's Note:**

> this whole thing is @saltwaterwarlock's fault too.

Beau is laying on her bed, and trying to breathe. Instead, her mind takes her back to the feelings of hands, squeezing her throat after one-too-many jabs at her father. Back to the feeling of her mother’s eyes, boring into the back of her skull, perfectly indifferent. To dropping to her knees in front of him, trying to breathe, grasping at her throat, and hearing the  _ click-click _ of his shoes as he walked out of the dining room. Gasping as she limped upstairs to her room. 

Finally, she manages to hold herself together. She looks around her room and decides,  _ fuck it _ , and climbs out her window. She brings no extra clothes, no food and no water, just the pocket knife she always carries with her and her wits. Once she reaches the ground, it’s child’s play to sneak past the guards. She reaches the edge of the woods pretty quick, and doesn’t hesitate to start running. 

Beau runs for a while. Definitely longer than her still-tender feeling lungs would prefer. But she knows she has to get as much as a head start as possible, because he’ll send out the dogs soon. Both literal, and metaphorical, if last time is anything to go by. She stops running, but she doesn’t stop moving until she feels like collapsing from exhaustion. She finds a sufficiently big tree, and curls up in its roots. The echoing expanse of darkness  _ does not _ scare her, and she  _ does not _ miss her bedroom, not even a little.

The next morning she sleeps in for a while, and then starts running again. This is her routine for the next few days. Run, until you collapse from exhaustion. Sleep, start running again. A fair amount of time later, she’s dirty, smells like the outdoors, has several bloodstains on her shirt that aren’t hers, and a couple that are, and the bruises on her neck are being really  _ fucking _ irritating. And it doesn’t help that any time she tries to rub or scratch them, it just brings back a fuckton of shitty memories. 

It’s mid afternoon, and she’s trying to pull her sleeve out of a thistle bush, when she hears a soft, but slightly scratchy voice say, “Hello there?”

She whirls around, readying her fists for a fight. In front of her, though, is a halfling woman, with a basket of berries hung over one arm, and the other hand resting on her very pregnant belly. Beau can feel herself lowering her fists a little, though not entirely. “Hmm. You look hurt, would you like some help? I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with those as well,” she says, nodding to the thistle bush, and still the most non-threatening person Beau’s ever seen. She lowers her fists completely, now. Not even she can think of an excuse to punch a pregnant lady who’s just trying to help. The woman sets her basket down, and comes over. It takes her only a few minutes to deftly detach the rest of Beau’s sleeve from the bush, and thankfully most of it’s still intact.

Before she realizes it, she’s walking home with the halfling woman- Veth- and she can’t really find it in her to stop. Veth is… nice, and the promise of a home cooked meal is very tempting. The walk is short, though Beau isn’t expecting to see a storefront attached. They enter through a back door and Veth calls out, “Yeza, I’m home, and we have a guest!”

* * *

Veth watches Beau as they get settled for the evening. She’d frozen up, when Luke had first tugged on her leg, whining to be held, but when Veth gave her an encouraging smile, she went ahead and picked him up. It was clear that she’d never held a child before, but after a few minutes, it was like watching an older sister. Veth smiled as Luke used Beau for a human climbing pole, and noticed how Beau made sure to steady him anytime he looked about to fall. Older sister indeed.

Dinner was good, and by the end of it, Beau was far less tense and hardly resembled the frightened animal she’d been acting like in the woods. It took less pestering than she’d thought it would on Yeza’s part to get her to take the healing potions he had stored away, and then she went to tuck Beau in while Yeza cleaned up (and vented a little of his anger at the bruises painting her neck. Veth was doing quite a bit of deep breathing about those herself). 

She led Beau down the hall to the guest room. “I’m so sorry about the dust, but we don’t have many visitors other than old Edith, and she much prefers her own home, just down the road,” Veth says. She motions Beau towards the bed, then goes to tuck her in, just like she does Luke. That’s when the still-rather-dirt-covered teenager bursts into tears.

Veth doesn’t let the momentary surprise stop her from reaching out and cradling Beau in her arms. She stays with her until Beau tires herself out, whispering quiet reassurances and stroking the girl’s hair. She gently lays Beau back onto the bed, and walks back to her and Yeza’s bedroom. He looks up from whatever he’s writing at the desk when she walks in, and apparently some of her simmering rage is showing on her face, because he sets down the quill and comes over to her. 

“When I find out who hurt that poor girl, Yeza, I am going to-” she starts,

“-Start the proper legal proceedings to adopt her?” he finishes, a knowing look in his eyes. She thinks again about Beau’s bruises. About what marks that she might not be able to see, about what could drive a  _ child _ to run for days on end (she  _ recognizes  _ the signs of exhaustion, in Beau, and knows she wouldn’t have lasted much longer out there, alone) and then thinks about the bottles of acid, much stronger than what they sell in the shop, sitting innocently on a locked shelf in their workshop.

“...yes.”

They look at each other, and know they’re in sync. They curl up in bed, and marvel that their family has grown again.

* * *

Beau wakes up, and realizes that she’s been with the Brenattos for a week. They’ve cleaned out the guest room, now, and told her she’s welcome to rearrange it however she likes. They ask her what her favorite food is, and after she tells them, dinner features it for the next few days. She sometimes cries, when Veth or Yeza tuck her in, and they hold her until it stops and she falls asleep, and they never,  _ ever  _ hit her. 

They let her babysit Luke. When one is out shopping and the other is working in the Apothecary, they leave her  _ alone _ with their  _ son _ . She’s never been trusted with something like this before, and the warm spot in her chest that started when she’d sat down at the dinner table that first night grows every time. She’s starting to think that, maybe, things will be alright. If- if her father doesn’t send men after two weeks, surely that means he’s given up, right? She lets a little bit of hope blossom in her heart, and then-

Then it’s mid-afternoon, and the Apothecary has been closed, and there’s a banging at the door. She’s holding Luke on her lap, both of them sitting in front of the fire as Veth tells the story of her having to rescue Yeza from the boughs of an apple tree. It’s warm and peaceful and everything her life before  _ wasn’t _ , and there is banging at the door. Veth and Yeza share a look, compressing a whole conversation into a wordless exchange that lasts seconds. Then, with very deliberate movements, Yeza gets up to get the door, only taking a small detour to grab a vial of something out of a cupboard, while Veth turns to Beau. “Beau, I want you to go put Luke in his room, okay? Stay safe, I’ll be back very soon,” and then she hurries out the back door.

She rushes to put Luke in his room- he’s picked up on her nervous energy, and is staring up at her with his watery blue eyes, “Beau?”

She sets him gently down in his room. “I need you stay here, okay bud? I’ll be- I’ll be right back, okay?” she says, and heads back out to the living room. She can fight them, if she has to. She won’t win, but she can give Yeza enough time to grab Luke and run. 

But when she reaches the living room, the sight in front of her stops her in her tracks. Yeza is standing straight, somehow managing to look down at men three times his height. His hands are on his hips, and his lips are pursed as one of the men demands they be let through, the tone of his voice indicating that he’s asked before and is not finding this game very fun- and when Yeza says “No, you have no legal authority to be in my home, and I demand you leave right this instant!” one of the other men decides that’s enough.

He pulls an axe, and Beau moves to run forward, but Yeza’s faster. He pulls the stopper out of the acid vial sitting right on the counter, and tosses it into the man’s face. He howls in pain, clutching his hands to his burning face, and the other men stare at Yeza with horror. Thankfully, before they can gather themselves, Beau sees Veth come running into the house, crownsguard behind her. “There they are! They came marching into our home, threatened my husband, and tried to kidnap my daughter!” Veth says, sounding every inch the outraged businesswoman and terrified mother. 

The next few hours are a blur. Beau is overwhelmed- Yeza attacked an  _ armed mercenary  _ for  _ her _ , Veth trusted  _ her _ with  _ Luke’s safety _ , and Veth had called her  _ daughter _ . After the crownsguard incapacitate the other two men, and send for a doctor for the third, and  _ then _ take statements from all of them, Veth and Yeza sit Beau down, while Luke plays in the corner. They tell her that they’d be honored to call her a part of their family, and they would adopt her- but only if she wants to. That even if she doesn’t, she’s welcome to stay with them for as long as she needs to. There’s lots of crying, mainly on Beau’s part, and by the time the sun sets, she’s no longer Beauregard Lionett, but Beau Brenatto, and she has never been happier in all her fourteen year old existence. 

When Yeza explains this all to Luke, later, and he’s quiet for a few seconds. “Wasn’t Beau already my new big sister?” is what comes out, and Yeza grins widely and hugs his son tight. “Of course she was, baby.”

**Author's Note:**

> rough timeline-   
> beau is 14 when she runs away/is found by veth.   
> She stays in felderwin until she’s 19/20(5, 6 years).   
> Heads out for the cobalt soul at/around 20. Stays there for 2-3 years  
> -next chapter is just going to be snippets of her growing up in felderwin


End file.
